The Pacifist
by WithPatienceComesPeace
Summary: A "Naruto needs a mom" fic that turned into much more. Is it possible to be a pacifist in the world of shinobi? Whose teachings do we take for our own means? How do we care for the ones we love when we can't fight our own addictions? How do we reconcile our needs with duty? Only love can offer hope. #orphan #alcoholism #parenting More Genres: Mystery, Drama, Romance. OCxKakashi
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

She was carrying a stack of boxes when she encountered him. She wasn't that tall, with an almond face and red eyes he mistook to be Sharingan. The moment she saw him, the boxes came tumbling out of her hands. She didn't scream.

He couldn't blame her for being afraid. She'd just opened the door to a closet to find a small child staring up at her. To be fair, Naruto hadn't expected her either. This house had been empty for years. A place to hide when he was in trouble — like right now, with his painting tricks. There was red paint in his blonde hair. In the pale light, he looked ghastly.

But instead of screaming, the woman knelt down. She recollected her stuff. With the ends of her navy blue skirt, she wiped the paint off cassette tapes that had clattered out of her boxes. She left a hand print in the red paint when she leaned forward into the closet. Her head almost butted into Naruto's stomach as she reached — not for him — but the two, three, no, four thick, wide rolls of tape that had rolled into the closet, away from her grasp. He could see the top of her red swirl, about a dozen shades darker than the paint, and as she left the scent of chamomile for just a flicker before it was overpowered by paint.

She did all these things without a word. When she stood up again, the stack of boxes between her arms went back to towering over her nose. He could see the red splotches of paint along the rim of her skirt, and where her knees had been. She looked down at him with a gaze one might give a small shrine by the roadside, and with one foot she brought the door back to a close. Naruto heard the door close with a click.

He leaned forward a bit, straining, and heard the boxes land on the table with a _thump_ , followed by a couple more _thump_ s before her footsteps retreated away. He listened to her steps take her downstairs and, after a few moments, placed the paintbrush he'd clutched white-handed back into the half-empty paint bucket. He reached up, slightly worried, to test the doorknob.

Not locked.

He let go of his breath.

Why hadn't she scolded him? Why wasn't she angry? She didn't know him. She didn't know who he was. And if he didn't leave fast, she would surely find out. And then she would chase him out with a broom, like the other women did.

He had to stand up to his toes to turn, with enough force, the doorknob so he could free himself again. When the door opened wide, he saw the incriminating puddle of paint he'd left outside the door, where anything with eyes could see. The rest of the paint, in the bucket he'd been holding, was just going to have to be a loss for him today. He'd painted the hokages' lips a provocative red on the monument. Now there were over a dozen ninja dispatched and hounding on him.

He had to get out of here before the lady came back. Had to find a new place to hide, before the Konoha ninjas found him.

In a matter of seconds, however, he knew he was already too late. He heard the voices of men come from downstairs.

"Ah, yeah, we are — looking for a miscreant. Have you seen him?" one said.

"Devilish little boy," supplied the other.

Even Naruto didn't think it was a good idea, but he couldn't help sidling to the bedroom door so he could hear her. Her voice was soft, and it sounded like she was perpetually amidst recounting a lovely dream. "A little devil, did you say?" She more stated than asked them this. Then she said, "No. I haven't seen such a thing."

He could just about _hear_ the two ninjas thinking: _She really thinks we'd believe that?_

"Your skirt," he heard one man say. "And all of that red on your hands."

"It's paint," she said. "I was painting my room, you see." She paused a moment. "I could use your help."

The first man made a noise of hesitating. "We're really busy," said the second.

"You're apprehending a criminal," she agreed. "We are lucky for all your good service." It was difficult to call her tone difficult sarcastic.

"Well…I guess, yeah," said the first. The second said something about being out of her way, and in a few moments, Naruto heard the front door lock with a click.

For a few more moments, he stalled. He'd returned to the closet, in case the ninjas tried to take a peek into the room through the window, but when he'd finished counting to over a hundred — a feat of patience for one who was seven — he couldn't stay there anymore.

He found the woman downstairs, digging heartily into a meat bun where she stood by the refrigerator. When she saw him slowly make his way around the corner, like a creeping cat, she pointed to the counter near the sink, where a plate rested with a bun like hers, alongside a glass of milk.

Naruto looked at her suspiciously, but he went and made his way forward, picking the plate off the counter. The counter was higher than his head, so he brought the plate off at a tilt, and the bun bounced off his nose and hit the ground. He hadn't had food yet that day, so he thought nothing picking it off the ground. It was cold. He made a face and saw her smile.

He ate. She didn't ask questions. As he finished, he kept staring, as children are oft to do. He put the plate back on the counter and he balanced the milk glass. She stepped forward before it could drop — and he, alarmed by the movement, was across the room in a single leap. He saw the flicker of something in her eyes. She collected herself. Holding the milk out to the farthest her dark, tan arms could extend, she said, "I don't want to hurt you."

He accepted the milk from her, gripping it in both hands. He didn't want to drop it.

And when he was finished with that, she slowly extended her hand. It was a thing that had never happened for Naruto: an adult extending a palm, face-up. Not sideways for a slap. Not downwards for a thrash. A hand for holding.

He looked up, unsure, and he gave her his hand. Her palm was soft and fleshy, and her fingers closed over his hand shortly. One day, he would do the same back, but on that day, she looked surprised at him. He realized what she'd actually been doing was asking for the cup, and he shoved it in her hands, turning red in profuse embarrassment.

"So are you gonna help me clean this mess?"

That was not one of the questions he had been expecting, and he said, "NO!" He stuck out his tongue and, now equipped with a warm belly and a milk mustache, ran out of her house.

The woman looked bewildered. When he came back in a couple of days, to the house at the edge of the wood, with its back against a boulder and one lonely fish in its pool, she wasn't there. He snuck in again. He found that room on the north side of the second floor. One wall had been painted red. When he came back a third time, he heard her footsteps on the stairs, and heart pounding, he fled. She found him on the fourth time, hiding in the closet again, with yet another bucket of paint, and yet another set of ninjas on his tail.

"Red? Again? Couldn't it be blue this time?" she said.

On that day he had Sunagakure's sand dumplings and milk tea.

"Actually, if you bring green and white next, that could be pretty useful."

This was how it started for them. He came and ate, was quiet out of fear. She asked him no questions. She was was unlike any other adult that he had ever met before. The others yelled at him. They'd beat him. They'd been, in many ways, unkind. But Naruto had always known what they would do to him. If he was him, if he was loud — he couldn't tell when it came to this lady. What would _she_ do?

But if he could only have been honest with himself, he wasn't quiet because he was scared of her. He had been quiet because that was how he'd always seen her. He wanted to be liked by her.

The days of quiet did not last long.

He began to come by earlier and earlier in the day. He came when he was tired of running. He even came right after school. One day, heart beating raucously, he knocked on her front door, instead of sneaking in through the north side window of the second floor bedroom. A door he knocked had never been answered before, so when it happened, he went wild.

"What's your name, lady? Huh? Where did you come from? What are you doing here? Are you going to live here for _ever_?"

That day, he could contain himself no more. That day, her house had lost all semblance of silence. He helped mop the kitchen floor — "Are you from the Land of Lightning? You're not? I thought that's where all brown people come from." — and he helped sweep the attic cobwebs — "You traveled the whole _world_? I'm going to travel the world too!" He helped varnish her desk — "This is just like painting!" — and he wanted to help choose dinner and sides — "Are you going to make some more dumplings? Your sand dumplings are the _best_." He helped unfold emptied boxes — "Do you know what my name is?" — and he stomped them flat so she could put them in storage — "I'm going to be Hokage someday!" He carried two baskets of laundry to the machine — "Is it okay if I just call you Seema?" — and he trailed after her with the new curtains she'd bought — "This color is boring. You should do orange. That's the best!"

And then it would be dark again, and he had to go back. The Third's retainers always checked on him at nine. If he wasn't in bed, there would be severe punishment. He'd go home and think of Seema and what they would be doing the next time they met.

It was a good way for his eighth year to end: Seema opening doors and finding this child; Seema giving him chores while he talked a mile; Seema holding his hand and giving him smiles; Naruto finding a place to spend time.

It would be the beginning of something great.


	2. Chapter 2

Then came the day the flutist first came to her house. Naruto heard the timbres low and sighing upon cresting the hill. The wind was swallowing notes in greed, but every now and then, one pierced its way out of its clutches and landed near Naruto, into the trees, an arrow that would then vanish.

At first, Naruto thought he had imagined it, but down the lane to Seema's house, he saw the flutist swing a leg off the wooden platform surrounding it. He sat sheltered away from the afternoon winds, the sliding doors of the wall behind him thrown open to his power. Now, holding the flute at his hips, he frowned at his wooden sandals.

Naruto swooped into the trees. Who was this man? He had never seen Seema with company. With — _other_ — company. Something squirmed inside his tummy. What if she asked Naruto to leave? What if, because of this big man, what if she turned Naruto away?

He leaped and bounded through what remained of the woods alongside the lane. He was the noisiest future-ninja one could ever dream; his backpack caught straps and pockets into every branch and every twig and even a bird's nest along the way. He was considering merely dropping the backpack and coming back for it when, all at once, the big man stood erect. Easily more than six feet tall, the flutist held his instrument like a baton in his hand and gazed into the pool ringed with rocks in front of him. Naruto watched him come down some steps, kick the smallest rocks into the pool, then turn around to enter the house in a huff.

What was _that_?

Touching the ground briefly, Naruto leaped onto the thatched roof. The man had looked angry. All angled shoulders. He didn't want the man to know he was coming. On the roof, Naruto shrugged off his backpack and perched himself exactly above where the flutist had been. He watched a single gray fish swim between clouds in the pool as he listened.

"Won't you keep playing a while?" he heard Seema say.

"But you're not even listening!" said a gruff voice. "You sat with your headphones on the whole day."

"Should it matter? I am paying you to play."

"But you're not even listening!" repeated the man.

There was a moment of silence. And then, "Naruto?"

He felt his heart come to a stop.

"Come inside, please."

The sound of things being put down. The sound of her getting up. Naruto landed beside the pool, remembered his backpack, and leaped up to grab it, but not before he got a glimpse of something he hoped would never come his way: Seema, glowering. He took off his sandals, put on the oversized sandals meant for inside the house, and watched Seema hand partial payment to the flutist. The flutist shrugged, took a moment to register Naruto, and walked out the way he came.

The room was filled overwhelmingly with…something. One corner hosted a pyramid of upturned foam cups. Carcasses of cheap noodles, the were the kind Naruto was not allowed to eat. The rice cooker on the breakfast counter found company with a series of cassette tapes and some bad smelling bottles. That's what it was — that overwhelming stench.

And there was parsley in her hair.

On the table in the center of the room, the offending headphones and the audio cassette player sat like paper weights on separate piles of open notebooks stacked one atop the next. He didn't look at them too long; the handwriting was indecipherable.

"Here." Always the first thing she did: shove food into his hands. This time it was one of her cups of ramen. She had retrieved it from her kitchen and brought it steaming, too hot to handle.

Naruto sniffed at it, disappointed. "It doesn't smell very good."

"How could you say that? Is this not the essence of life? Nothing good comes out without ramen."

He couldn't tell she was being sarcastic. In fact, he wouldn't understand it later either. All he knew was that ramen was the essence of life, and we all know where ramen would take Naruto in life. But that is another story.

He set his backpack on the ground, accepted the chopsticks she offered him, and sat at the table, thinking the fish in the pool outside would probably taste better than this. That made him feel guilty.

"Hey, Seema-chan…" He looked up at her.

She wasn't listening. Headphones on, she scrawled single-mindedly into a notebook. That really _was_ her handwriting…

Naruto stuck some ramen into his mouth and yelped. "Ack! Hot! Hot!"

Seema slipped off her headphones and frowned. "Come here."

Naruto felt his insides go cold. He didn't like the way she commanded him. People were always commanding him. Telling him what to do. Come here. Go there. Go away.

Mostly go away.

The steam from the ramen swept over his face. If he went away now, something told him he couldn't come back.

"Come. Here."

He stood up, watching the way the fingers of her hands were interleaved within each other. He stepped towards her tentatively. He was afraid to get hit.

"Bring the ramen."

He did as she commanded.

"Sit."

She swept the pile of notebooks aside and patted a spot on the purple cushion beside her. He handed her the cup and the chopsticks, resigning himself to watching her eat the rest as she brought the ramen to her mouth, but she was blowing on it…blowing away the hot. She held the ramen out to him.

He felt his throat come to a close. _Don't cry._ Opening his mouth, he tried his best to slurp it down, feeling how close her face would come every time she leaned forward to blow on the broth. Her breath bounced softly off the ramen. He felt it on his face. The ramen was harder and harder to swallow. He needed to say something. Anything.

"Seema-chan…"

"Hmm."

"Where's your family?" He knew he shouldn't ask this, but he had to know. He just had to. And in one question, he was asking many, many things, many things that all boiled down to just one thing: _Are you like me?_

But then she said, "Far away," and his heart broke a little. His brain knew it shouldn't, but what does the brain do for anything?

He decided to change the subject. "Why did you bring that flute player?"

"I needed quiet, and peace."

"Then why the headphones?"

"Because I'm working."

None of this made sense to Naruto. Not yet, at least, so he asked, "Why do you live alone?"

Her eyes finally focused on him with this final query. "Naruto," she said, "I am never alone."

* * *

He wanted to give her the packet of candy he bought, but when he reached to find it in his backpack's side pocket, he found the packet gashed open from his dash through the trees. He was, for a minute, ashamed, when she said, "You're a real binashi if I ever saw one."

"I'm a what?"

She told him a story from her lands. He didn't feel like it was a compliment. Binashi was a girl who once got lost in the woods, and she was crying. She cried so much, she was able to use her trail of tears to keep track of where she went, and eventually she found her way out again. "Except you left a trail of rainbow tears," Seema said, examining the tarnished purple packet of what used to be colorful fruit chews. "You certainly wouldn't be that hard to track."

Naruto felt his cheeks flame as he snatched the packet back. "I just won't bring my backpack next time."

"Yes you will," she said. "Take out your homework."

Naruto's jaw dropped open. " _What?_ "

"I'm working right now. That means you're working too."

"Why do _I_ need to work?"

"Because I can't have you asking so many questions." She set the now-empty ramen cup on the other side of the table and pulled her pile of notebooks back into place.

"I can be quiet," insisted Naruto.

"You _will_ be, because you'll be working."

"You're not going to make me work!"

"I might."

"You're _not_!"

She paused for a moment, then said, "What if I give you something like this?" She touched her fingers to her headphones. They were large and round and fit all around her ears, with a gleaming red metal band and black, leather ear-cups.

Naruto considered for a moment. "Okay." He started pulling his history out when Seema rose to her feet and went upstairs. He pulled out a page of something he was supposed to do three days ago as he waited. He couldn't find the homework he was supposed to do today, and in any case, at least he already knew the answers to the old stuff. Or — at least, he _thought_ he remembered. Looking at this stuff about the Inuzuka, Aburame and Hyuuga clans, he was no longer quite sure…

He stuffed the history page back into his backpack before Seema could come back and started pulling other papers out instead. Most of the pages at the bottom were crushed and folded to look almost like origami. This was months of papers on which Naruto had thrown on his books and textbooks. He found a field trip permission slip. Maybe he _would_ be able to go to the shinobi museum after all!

When she came back, she was holding another pair of headphones. They were boring and black, and they looked cheaply made, but Naruto accepted them. She handed an audio cassette player to Naruto, at which he marveled. He'd never even held such a thing before. There were three buttons on one side like a spine, with a triangle, square, and the double-triangle of fast forward. He listened to it whir when he pressed that, and liked how pressing the square made the whirring stop with a snap. Seema was already scratching away again. Naruto looked at her machine, resting near her left hand. She had pressed down one button — the single triangle — down.

Naruto positioned the headphones over his ears — these ones with earmuffs made of gray foam — and at first they were itchy. But when he pressed play, all of his thoughts stopped.

It was music. It was flute music. The music collected in his throat. It slipped down the shaft of his airway and he breathed it into his lungs. It stirred inside the pockets of his heart. The flute sounded far away. It sounded like it was in the next room. He didn't know why it sounded like that. Perhaps the tape she had purchased was bad quality. Maybe she got it off a black market, though why anyone would sell a bad copy of a tape of flute music was beyond him.

He listened to it nonetheless. He was grateful that she was so absorbed inside her work she didn't notice he was just sitting there. Sitting and listening. He wondered how long it would take for her to notice, but when she didn't, he lay down on his back and looked up into darkness, feeling the heaviness in his eyelids. Before he knew it, Seema was shaking him awake.

"You have to go home now, Naruto."

He sat up, yawned, and rubbed his eyes. To his surprise, it was still sparkling outside. He looked worriedly at Seema, who was avoiding his eyes. He'd never left the house this early. Why did he have to go away so fast? She held up his backpack and he slipped his arms through the holes.

He gasped. "Seema-chan!" He picked up the permission slip, which, still on the table, had caught his eye. "Can you sign this?"

She took the slip from him, and she signed, without even looking at it. Naruto held it out, startled. _Kavita…Sinha._ He could actually read the name. She had written it nicely. She _could_ write things nicely.

"Wait," he said. "This isn't your name. I thought your name was Seema."

"Seema _is_ my name. At least for my family and friends."

Naruto beamed. "Thanks!" he said. He started walking away.

"Wait! Don't lose it. Put it in your backpack."

Naruto felt a faint tendril of sweat slide down the small of his back. If he put that slip _inside_ his backpack, he was _bound_ to lose it.

"And also, don't forget to take this." She held out the black headphones and the cassette player.

For a moment, he believed that he loved her, and she loved him.


	3. Chapter 3

When Iruka saw the name on Naruto's permission slip, he was sure the kid was joking. This was back when Iruka was in charge of children in both the second and fifth years, and Naruto was — once again — a second year. It didn't seem like this handwriting was Naruto's, but he was accustomed to seeing signatures come from the Third Hokage. So it was immediately on being handed the slip that Iruka confronted him about it.

"What is this, a joke?" Iruka leaned his rump against his teacher's desk as the students filed past them.

Naruto was turning red in the face. "No, it isn't. I got permission."

"Permission from who?" Iruka asked, confounded. _So now he's_ ** _forging_** _these? Where did he get this_ ** _idea_** _? He can't even_ ** _begin_** _to understand how severe the penalties could be._

"I got it from — " — And here, he struggled to say the word — " — my family!"

"Naruto, you don't _have_ any family," Iruka overheard Ino say. Like most of the other students already exiting the doorway, she had already handed Iruka her permission slip and tossed this bit of news over her shoulder nonchalantly. "Because you're an orphan. Do you even know what 'orphan' means?"

For a moment, Iruka wanted to slap her. Which was highly inappropriate, but he didn't have to see the fury writ across Naruto's face to know Naruto knew full well what it meant to be an orphan. Iruka knew what it meant to be an orphan. But children, being children, said the cruelest of all things.

"I'm not making this up, Iruka Sensei," Naruto said through gritted teeth. "'Cuz Seema said she's my family."

"That doesn't say 'Seema', you imbecile," Neji joined in, handing his own permission slip out to Iruka. "And now we learn you can't even read. Astounding."

"That's cuz — Seema is just her nickname!" Naruto called after Neji. "Seema is real! _And_ she's my family! Believe it!"

Kiba and Shikamaru glanced at each other furtively behind Naruto's back as they too handed their slips. Iruka waited until the rest of the students left. Then he crossed his arms.

"Naruto…lying can be a pretty big crime."

"I'm not lying."

"And signing an official document like this — this is forgery."

"It's _not_ a _four_ -gee."

Iruka opened his mouth to correct him, but he knew that would be a waste. Naruto wasn't listening. "I'm getting you a new permission slip." He stood to get to the drawers on the other side of his table, but Naruto had already backed away a few steps. "Get the Third to sign it."

He could hear the shaking in Naruto's voice. "The Third isn't my family."

"Naruto — "

"The _Third_ — is _not_ — my _family_!" He looked Iruka straight in the eyes. " _No_ body believes me. Why does _no_ body believe me?"

Iruka steeled himself. "Because you're _lying_." He didn't want to be stern this way, but he had to be.

He saw something go slack inside Naruto's eyes. A bridge had closed, and Iruka knew that it was happening. _Felt_ it happening. He could see good faith extinguish. And he was trying not to feel it, as he turned away from Naruto to open the second drawer. He pulled a new, clean permission slip from the folder and walked it back to Naruto, but when Iruka held the slip out, Naruto slapped it away.

He said, "I'm going to prove it to you. And when I'll finally be Hokage, _everybody_ is going to believe me. _No_ one is going to say I was lying." He turned his back on Iruka. "Not even you."

* * *

It felt like his feet couldn't run fast enough. They left pavement and landed with a clatter on metal roofs and wooden poles. The clouds swung underneath them before his feet found ground again. He ran, he ran, he ran. He didn't know where he was going, but he was bound to get there fast. Or perhaps he was going nowhere. Perhaps that would be the best description of his life, if his future was informed by his past. He realized with a shock that he had left his backpack in the classroom — and in it, wedged deep in the papers, his headphones. Seema's headphones.

He slid to a stop on a market roof. He couldn't imagine going back. Iruka Sensei must have already gone home by now. They probably locked the school already, with his backpack.

But the headphones…Seema had _just_ given him those headphones. He'd listened to the flute on that one side of the tape so many times last night, the player ran out of batteries. He'd have to wait for the Third's weekly check so he could get money to buy more. In a spell of dizziness, he nearly swooned off the side of the building. He remembered how much he hadn't sleep.

 _If only Iruka Sensei…_ Naruto regarded the sinking sun. He couldn't go back to get the player, but he couldn't show his face to Seema if he had to tell her that he lost it.

That's it. He _had_ to get it back.

Swallowing his pride and sinking into tired depression, Naruto started to head back. _At least Iruka Sensei will be gone._ He decided locked doors shouldn't be a problem. He was supposed to be a shinobi. He would face the challenge when he got there.

But the door wasn't locked when Naruto returned, and Iruka Sensei wasn't gone.

* * *

Iruka was surprised to see Naruto back. He had just returned from the bathroom, having just graded the Chapter 4 math tests, when he found Naruto back in the room. Iruka froze, then swooped against the wall of the corridor to watch him open his backpack, search frantically inside it, make a sound of relief as he pulled out some black thing, and, satisfied with having found it, dropped it right back again. Shouldering his backpack, Naruto mounted an open window sill, left open since the room was so hot and stuffy, and leaped out of the building.

Iruka sighed, re-entered the room, stopped a moment, and sighed again. He couldn't help it. He just simply could not. He leaped out the window and followed Naruto.

* * *

It was one of those days again. She was writing and glowering into the page. She'd set a ramen cup in front of Naruto, and did not even offer to blow it cold for him today. Just latched on headphones and wrote. It was all she was doing lately. He wished he could have told her about today. About everyone else.

But then, he decided against it. No way would he tell her that. Tell her he was a loser? That everyone else thought he was a freak? A monster? It was a thought he had always had at the back of his head; unshaped, unworded, unacknowledged, but very real. A deep-seated fear that if Seema met anyone else, anyone who knew anything about Naruto…she'd turn out just like the rest. So it was okay with him, that she didn't ask. It was okay with him, that he didn't have to talk today. It was okay with him.

But his mind did begin to wander, and he had started to get bored. He'd specifically left his backpack at home this time, so she wouldn't tell him to do homework. Looks like she'd forgotten this. He had brought the headphones though. He'd been quite careful. Didn't even jump into the trees on his way here. He walked. The whole way. For four miles. He imagined the music the whole way, because by now he had it memorized. There were eight songs, total. He wondered if he could ask to borrow a different tape. Her house had now become a library. She had so many tapes. There must be so much music. Was all of it flute? He'd heard of an instrument called a 'crumpet', which was supposed to be a staple in the Land of Wind. He wondered if she had some crumpet music too.

He spent time poking his nose into the room he'd first met her in. The closet was actually full by now, half of it makeshift shelves she must have installed herself, the other half long, flowing dresses that came in pine greens and slate. He wanted to touch them very badly, but there was dirt inside his fingernails. He didn't dare.

When he came back, he saw she was wearing something navy today, with silver flowers stitched on a scarf-like piece of cloth that ran in front of her neck, over her shoulders and down her back.

"This is boring," he said. He thought she wouldn't hear, but something froze. Not her pen. But — something. Something stopped moving. Or did it start?

Naruto narrowed his eyes. Outside, the sky was starting to turn orange. Naruto's shadow fell over the fish in the pool, and it darted under a rock. The small rocks the flutist kicked in were still there, growing green things on them. Naruto listened, in case he heard any more sounds, then took his sandals off to retrieve the three rocks. He placed them where he thought that they belonged, then sat down, with a sure sense he was being watched. He looked back, thinking maybe it was Seema. Maybe he could catch her and she would notice him or something. Smile. Say something.

But today was not that kind of day. Today she was busy.

He went back inside the house to find her with her head in her arms.

"Seema-chan!" He hurried forward and shook her shoulder, careful to keep his fingers off the flowers on her scarf. "Seema-chan, are you okay?"

She lifted her head enough to peer at Naruto. "Headache. Time for my medication."

Before he could say anything, she was already standing up. She left the room and came back with a very large bottle. It didn't look like medication. Those bottles were usually very small. This one was capped by an ornate orange cloth cover with a rope tying it in place. She untied the rope and took a very big sip.

" _That's_ not _medicine_!" Naruto said. Even he knew this bottle was. Sake. Smelled terrible.

"Want to give me a kiss?" Seema puckered her lips and leaned in his direction.

" _Ewww!_ " He leaped back. "That's seriously _gross_!" He clamped his nose closed in his fingers.

Seema started laughing, a sound he had not yet encountered, and was sorry to let go of so soon afterward. She'd plugged it with the bottle. When she was breathing again, she announced that she was going upstairs. For a nap. He knew that he wasn't going to see her again, at least not for the rest of the night, but he loitered around anyway, listening to the crickets getting louder and the calls of the birds of the night. He wondered if he should close the sliding doors. Did she even close them at night? What if, one day, some robbers came? And they came in and — did something worse? Something terrible…

Not that there was anything worth robbing in this house. No offense to her, but the most expensive thing he could see was her rice cooker. He hadn't even seen her wearing jewelry. Girls liked to do that, once in a while. Any chance they could. Didn't they?

He sighed. The sound of his sigh made things more ominous. He recalled the feeling he'd had of being watched. It was giving his chills up his back. He was going to get out of here. He got on his knees to reach under the table to pick up his headphones — when he saw hers instead.

Naruto froze. Considered. Looked to the stairway she had gone up. And then, taking a seat on the lavender cushion she had been sitting on — still warm — he picked up the headphones. These were _huge_. When he placed them atop his head, they were so big, the ears of the headphones actually went down on his cheeks, but he was too scared to adjust it, fearful the _click-click-click_ would bring Seema down the stairs. He hit play on her cassette player and held the headphones up at his ears.

It was silent at first. Just the sound of tape rolling. And then, it wasn't music.

 _"I come from a family ailing in poverty,"_ said a woman's voice. It was very much familiar. _"There was not much the world would forward to me and mine. That May and June were cold and wet, leaving the rice paddies susceptible to the yagami stem borers and raito planthoppers. It was the Second Famine, and we starved. Just three of us. My mother, my brother, and moi. He must have been fourteen at the time. I was nine._

 _"And I was smarter."_


	4. Chapter 4

_I come from a family ailing in poverty. There was not much the world would forward to me and mine. That May and June were cold and wet, leaving the rice paddies susceptible to the yagami stem borers and raito planthoppers. It was the Second Famine, and we starved. Just three of us. My mother, my brother, and moi. He must have been fourteen at the time. I was nine._

 _And I was smarter._

You'd think having a sweet, sickly mother would make him think twice about it, but I caught him eating up our rations in secret — thrice. I have no clue what he thought we'd do when we ran out. The village elders were strict and sure how much they should provide, to whom.

He told me that the rats had eaten them, the moron. If there had been any rats, we would have been eating _them_. I couldn't believe I shared blood with something so dumb.

So I killed him one day, using his own stupid jutsu. Substitution. The days had grown hot, and the fields were not yielding. The fish in the rivers had still not returned, thanks to Amegakure's poisonous wastes floating down. People were saying the Village Hidden in the Rain (more like a city) were the ones sending rain unending. I didn't care. There was nothing I could do about it. It was my brother I could do something about.

And so I did. I coaxed him out into the river with me. I had told him that I'd found fish. Near the far side, close to the butcher's house, just past the Maidens Holy, where the cliffs hung so far out we could pass underneath unseen. I told him to not tell anyone, but I needed his help. See, I was nimble, so I could catch the fish, but I told him I could not kill them. I did not have that strength in me. But I knew he could.

He agreed to help me readily. "How do you think we should cook the fish?" he asked, already planning.

"Let's get the fish first. We'll let Mum decide how."

"Good plan."

"And put these burlap sacks in your pocket," I insisted before I got into the boat. "We'll hide the fish when we're returning."

He put them in his pockets and nosed the boat into still waters, jumping in after me.

"There!" I said, when we had gotten under the cliffs. "That's where the fish breed." My brother waited until the boat floated closer to where I pointed. The waters, tinged deep blue-gray from the Hidden Rain's industry, had gotten very much opaque, so my brother near skimmed his nose along the surface he was trying so hard to see.

His face was the last thing he'd be seeing, for it was right as he leaned over the water that I threw my weight in that direction. We were in a canoe, and we capsized, but not before I substituted the burlap sacks with rocks I hid under my seat.

My brother had no chance. He was always a poor shot at swimming, and he'd never been out in water so deep. My biggest concern was that his hand would clamp over my foot, but once he slipped into the water with nary a shout, neither hand nor foot would come up again to even generate a splash. There were just a bunch of bubbles, bubbles lost amidst more bubbles as I motioned the canoe towards shore. I knew I wouldn't be able to right it on my own, but I could pull it, since the river didn't move. I was anxious to get going. Everyone had seen what happened to Ameera's skin when she'd swum those waters too long. We'd all seen the silver sheen — which I had been the first to declare beautiful — before it was peeling within a half week.

When I was back on shore, I realized I was not sufficiently prepared to tell my mother. The cobbler was the first to find me, in all of my distress. He called for his daughter-in-law to come out with the poultices, applying his aid first in helping me drag the boat out of the river, then in ripping my clothes off so that the chemicals they'd soaked did not start burning into my skin. I thanked him graciously in all my years to come. I don't know how long it would have taken until I thought of my clothes. The only thought I had was that my brother was dead. My brother was dead, and there was nothing I could have said to ease Mum's woes.

She would move on from it eventually. It took three years to reach that point. But in just another three years, it would all be undone, because then we faced the Drought. The Drought took the water and left my brother's bones. We found the coat he was wearing, metallic, glued to his rotted skin, and in his pockets — rocks.

And by we, I mean, my mother. She had gotten better, thanks to that disgusting medical-nin veterinarian I had to seduce. She once asked me why, asked me how, for we never had any money. Why would this man help her, when we had nothing to offer?

I was weak. I couldn't hold her gaze.

She never asked again.

Well, she'd been walking along the banks. I never returned to it, not after that day, but she would, every now and then. She said she was "searching for his spirit." It didn't occur to me there was anything the chemicals and poisons wouldn't dissolve. Not that I would have returned to take care of the mess anyway. That would have seemed like admitting guilt. Wouldn't it?

I'd been nine. I'd been scarred. It was enough that the village chose to think of me so.

Little did I know how this discovery would take a turn for me.

My mother went back to drawing her diagrams. She'd been a botanist all her life, and though her botanical knowledge never lent itself to the poison and healing interests shinobi wanted to reap, over the scientific community she held much sway. She was just proposing a theory about something she had heard termed "genetics." She was analyzing "dominant" and "recessive" traits, and I, her crucial "assistant," humored her to give her something to do with her mind, when there was little she could do with her body. It was when she was sealing a report I had written, word for word from her mouth, that she told me.

She expected the look of shock on my face. She did not know what went on behind it, for she then said, "I just want you to know that it wasn't your fault."

I did not know what to do with this statement. She went on. "I hear the way you weep at night. And I wanted to tell you that it wasn't your fault." She held my face as both her eyes began leaking. "Your brother committed to kill himself long time ago. If not that day, it would have been the next."

The thoughts in my head went out like a suffocated candle. My world closed around me. As if time coiled into a tight spiral, I heard her voice reverberate down to me from every future stage of my life, all the times she would say to me:

"It wasn't your fault he committed suicide."

"He wanted us to eat. How your brother was kind."

"That _I_ could bring something so good into the world, that this son was mine."

And in the dark, hateful moments: "You should have been more like your brother."

And I know that sometimes she thought, it should have been me. It should have been me, not my brother.

And what could I say to her?

When the rains flushed our lands and brought the rice back again, the paralysis locked itself within her joints. It would no longer go away. This time it was here to stay.

Again, she sank into indignity. She fell into dying of grief. And I, the "assistant", went back to cooking her meals, emptying her bedpans, lancing her blisters.

Eighteen years. Eighteen years is too long to sustain gratefulness. Eighteen years, only built of resentment and shame. How heavily did she lean on me. How because of her, I became nothing. How without me, she would be nothing — the genetics research, our accomplishment, stamped her name into history, though I had been holding the pen.

She made her son into a hero. In memory, he lived beautiful and young, lamented long into the future. His flaws faded, and he attained perfection in memoriam. He claimed a piece of my mother's heart that can only be claimed in death.

"You should learn from his example, my dear. You should learn from him."

Then came the day she was dying. In her final words, she appealed to him once more. She wanted to leave me inspired, but I broke. I would brook this injustice no more.

"I did it." I said, " _I_ did it. He didn't commit suicide. _I_ killed him."

And my mother, eyes round, just said, "Oh."

And then she died. Just like I thought she would.

* * *

 _They chose to sink her down into the river, over my darling brother's bones. Fearing they'd one day do the same to me, I fled. I have been traveling, traveling since. I know not how I'd lost my way. They would not take me into Amegakure, even after the end of Hanzo's reign, so I meandered on my own, and then I —_

There was the sound of something rolling across the ceiling. Naruto looked up and yanked the headphones off his head. He could hear his own breath in his ears. And then, the definitive sound of footsteps. How long had it been? It had been an hour? Already?

Naruto left the headphones on the ground again, where he had found it, then grabbed his own. He slammed his shin against the corner of the table fleeing into the night and the winds. Leaping out towards the trees, he underestimated the wind and miscalculated his right foot's newfound weakness. This left him hurtling far and left of aim. It was a body-slam into a tree trunk. The panic cleaved out of him with the impact. As he felt the blood trickle down from a split cheek, he found the silence and the clarity to think.

He wasn't thinking about what she would do to him — if she would be angry — or how mad. He was thinking about the voice he'd heard in the audio. It didn't lilt like her; she didn't speak that way. But the voice, that bewildering voice, so steady, so strong, and so cold — that voice was still undoubtedly hers.

This meant the entire thing had been an exercise in agony, for he had _just_ found somebody to love.

He had _just_ found somebody to love.

He had _just_ found somebody to love.

He pulled his face away from the tree, wincing as he pulled a splinter out of his cheek with a pointer and a thumb. He had _just_ found somebody to love.


	5. Chapter 5

"What did you do to your face, Naruto?"

This was said by Iruka Sensei, but it ran so close to a vein of taunts and insults, Naruto didn't respond. His cheek bled through the bandaid, growing angrier, redder, enflamed. He barely made it through the first substitution jutsu lesson when Naruto fainted.

He sank out of consciousness and into a dream. He became a fish. Seema's fish. He was the fish from her pool, and he was struggling through turbulent tides. Suddenly, the waters went slack. They became deep and purple and murky. The water was hard to take in through his gills. His flaps were clogging with what felt like mucus. He knew these waters, for he had voyage from a place of ceaseless rain: Amegakure.

A giant shadow passed over him, and he smacked into an oar with his face.

An oar, an oar, an oar. An oar that sliced into the water, gliding down from up above, like an antenna extending off the shadow of the boat. Fish-Naruto knew where he was.

He should not look up. He knew it from dream logic, that he shouldn't look up. But he did anyway. He swam up to the shadow, crossed the lip of the water, and what did he find but himself? His fish eye-against-eye with his own face, his Naruto face, his human face, Naruto's nose nearly skimming the water.

He didn't need to see who sat at the other end of the boat.

Then the body came tumbling in. The body was tumbling down beside the fish, and for a moment, he was both entities. He was the human and the fish, but the fish was taking nibbles at Naruto's lashes prematurely. He knew he should have stopped. The fish, he should have stopped. Naruto knew he should have stopped. He shouldn't have cast away on that canoe. He should have let Seema drift alone. But he would come anyway. He knew he would always come. The fish knew it too, so the fish came to wait. The fish came to watch him fall asleep in the water. The fish would peck the sleep sand out of the corner of his eyes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner again.

Naruto came to in the nurse's office. He was on one of those smooth, blue, uncomfortable bed things, things that weren't really beds. It had that white disposable paper for bedsheets. He turned his chin into a pool of drool and ducked his head away in disgust. Wiping the drool at his lips with his wrist, he fell back into dreaming.

He was in her house and he couldn't find her. He couldn't, he couldn't, he couldn't. The headphones were where he had left them. The fish watched him from its cool pool. Again, he knew he shouldn't look up. A pressure on his brain; a hand palming his head down. But he rolled his eyes upwards instead and the pressure just vanished. Behold! Hundreds and hundreds of cassette tapes. They lined the ceiling like bricks and glistened in the light of her lamps as if she had brushed each and every one with oil.

And then the film of the tapes descending like snakes, thin strips numerous and weightless as rain, slow-motion, ever-present, coming down on his skin. A whistling wind lanced through the house, slipping in through the shaft of the sliding doors. It sent the snakes vaulting in breathtaking unison.

When at last he could look down, Naruto saw her in the tape recorder. Minified, poor Seema! She was tiny in the cassette player; she was tiny _in the cassette_ , and she was doing something fast. Her arms were flailing; she was writing; she was writing as fast as she could, her implement a large bear-hair calligraphy brush, her canvas a moving film of tape. The film was about to run out.

When the tape ended, something would happen. Naruto knew he didn't want it to happen, but if he pressed stopped, if he ended the movement and let her arms come to rest, it would only happen sooner.

So he did nothing.

He did nothing and watched.

When he woke he started crying. It just occurred to him: though he could do nothing else, the least he could have done was listen. He could have collected the words in his ears. What had she been writing? What was she saying so frantically? Thoughts so big it took the sweep of her arms to contain them.

He wept because he thought he lost something. And when the dream melted out of memory, he truly _did_ lose something. He couldn't remember what it was, so he cried harder. Then he couldn't remember why he was crying, so he cried harder.

He was home now, and he didn't know why.

When next he opened his eyes, it would be daylight again.

* * *

One day, when Naruto was done with the toilet, he passed the mirror and glimpsed something wrong with his face. A big, white gauze, patched onto his face like it belonged there. He ripped the patch off of his cheek in inexplicable anger, but the residue he found in it was not dirty brown as expected. It was creamy. It was white. On his cheek, where the wood chip and splinter had been was a white dot amidst something reddish and angry. Like the knob of a bone poking out of his flesh.

Naruto fainted.

So it went for many days. Naruto lost count. Not that he ever had count. He meandered from memory to dream to hallucination, forgetting each in quick succession until they came back unbidden to him in later lifetimes.

Kabuto was the latest retainer. There'd never been one who watched him so long. There was no one who came so often to visit. Not visit. To check him. To check up on him.

He eventually said Naruto was free to go. Then he stopped coming.

"I thought you weren't coming anymore," she said to him when Naruto could visit Seema at last. "I thought I was boring."

Naruto shook his head and told her he'd been sick with an infection.

"For two _weeks_?" she exclaimed, examining the faint white scar on his cheek.

He nodded into her hands, mostly so he could feel them as they cupped his cheeks. She took her hands back to finish washing the dishes. She brushed a drying towel across his face to wipe the soap suds she'd left on it.

It was a long time they didn't talk, Naruto standing at her elbow by the sink, Seema running long brown fingers — now with three stout wooden rings — over the planes and curves of steel plates. The water she splattered went far beyond the rims of the sink. It even landed on the window in front of the sink, which, because it was dark outside, gave him perfect view of her furrow-browed reflection.

"Well, then. Make yourself useful." She stuffed the drying towel into his hands, and a wet plate.

He immediately dropped it with the crash of a cymbal.

" _Iiiishhhh!_ Naruto!" She picked it up so she could wash it again. " _Gadhe!_ "

Naruto was ecstatic. That was _exactly_ what Ino's mother sounded like when she was scolding. Except for the _gadhe_ part. He didn't know what that meant.

But Seema was looking at him, and then she was angrily scrubbing her plates. "I thought you weren't coming anymore."

Now he was faltering. He wrapped and he wrinkled the towel around and around and around his wrist instead of wiping. "You don't want me coming?"

The silence kept expanding. He couldn't say the words again. He was so, overwhelmingly, afraid. All he could do, all he could dare to do, was take a peek at the window.

The Seema in that square of glass muttered, " _Gadhe!"_ under her breath again.

The Seema in that square of glass was crying.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

She didn't say anything when she sat down upon his bed. Just looked at his table, sink, fridge, bathroom. Naruto scratched an ankle with the sandal of his other foot as he stood by the table, stomach in knots. The room had never seemed so small. Not with the retainers, not even with the Hokage.

It had been getting a bit too quiet, so Naruto started circulating through things lining one of his bookshelves. "Hey, Seema-chan, ever seen this?" He brought her a pinwheel that looked like the red Mangekyou of the Uchiha clan when it spun. Then it was a cricket he had encased in resin back during the first grade, a painting of the sun — a one-off art performance he was never able to recreate — a Hyuuga flag he had somehow managed to steal away last New Year's Festival, a comic book given to him by the Third Hokage, and a Will of Fire bookmark that he had never used. He showed her a picture he had from kindergarten, as well as the "graduation medal" he had gotten that day, with the red tactile swirl of the Uzumaki clan.

She looked at each of these with interest. She let him blow on the pinwheel to make it turn, moving it to and away from him with measured movements in her wrist. She didn't pick up the cricket no matter how long he held it out. She held the painting up to the light nuzzling in through the window so the sun could poke in through it exactly where Naruto had painted it, and waved the small Hyuuga hand-flag around a bit, turning it this way and that. Patting the bed beside her, she let Naruto sit beside her as she read her whole way through the comic book. He spent some time watching her eyes as they traveled up and down each page, so he knew when it was time to turn the page. But he got bored and went back to the table, and started drawing until she finished. She'd slipped the bookmark inside the book when she rose to stand.

"Naruto…" She stood behind Naruto for a moment to examine his drawing, then started doing something inside the cupboards he had to climb the kitchen counters to reach. "I don't imagine you were taking care of yourself when you were sick. Were you?"

"No." Naruto shrugged. "It was someone else." He had already forgotten. "Whoever is working for the Third."

Seema froze from the arch of her back. "The what?"

"I mean the Third Hokage, _duh_."

She pulled her gaze away from the plates, bowls, cups, and the single tea strainer Naruto never ever used, because tea was for old people. He didn't see the conflict in her face when she said, "Well, that's a marvelous thing to do." She said it in a tone that made him think she didn't find it was marvelous at all. "To be so…involved… in raising _all_ the orphans…?" She was studying the medal with the Uzumaki swirl with the base of her thumb, the way she'd studied the scar on his cheek last night with the base of her thumb.

"Not all the orphans," he said, feeling wary. "I guess, just, _me_." _Because I'm a monster._ Then he realized he wouldn't know if there were others like him that the Third Hokage attended to, and for some reason, the thought ignited a fear in his stomach.

"I dunno," he said, suddenly tired of drawing. He felt like he'd been sitting still for _ages_. He didn't want to admit it to himself, but he was starting to look forward to the moment when Seema'd be gone. Then he could race across rooftops and visit Hokage Rock.

"Let's go outside," said Naruto. Seema nodded. She left the medal on top of the comic book, at the foot of his bed, where he'd be convinced he could still smell her perfume for many, many days.

* * *

He had been shocked when he learned she didn't know Konoha. That she didn't know her way around it. It never occurred to him that it could be something to not know. But then he had fun bringing her from her house to his place. It had been the first time he was walking with someone who wasn't paid to watch over him.

Now he took her to the park where he would often swing, and then he insisted on swinging.

He took her to the library. It was the first time he'd ever been to the library.

He took her past the ramen shop. But he was mostly hoping she wouldn't notice that place.

When they were at Hokage Rock, she was silently examining the sign proclaiming the monument's reverence, then surveyed with disinterest the Uchiha District that rolled out from under the eastern cliffs. Naruto watched what he thought were Sasuke, his mother and Itachi, all exiting the senbei shop, and quickly tamped down his jealousy.

"Remember what you see here today," Naruto declared, pointing irreverently into the kages' faces. "I'm going to be Hokage someday, so my face will be up there too!"

He waited for her to say something, then put his hand down, feeling foolish. He wondered for a moment if she hadn't hear him at all when she said, "That sounds, infinitesimally, boring."

Naruto gawked. " _Huh?_ " He had been laughed at; he'd been dismissed; no one had ever passed judgement on the goal itself. They couldn't see past the absurdity of Naruto.

"What does a Hokage do every morning?"

It sounded like she was about to enlighten him, so Naruto said, "What?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. I was asking you." She went back to surveying the Uchiha District, not even looking at the rock. "I imagined that's something _you_ would want to do with your ever morning. Whatever a Hokage does."

Naruto felt the small of his back getting hot, and it wasn't because of the sun or the humidity. "Well, I will let you know! …I'll let you know when I get there!"

He decided the day had been getting too hot and suggested they start heading back. She stopped after five minutes of following Naruto and said, "How was it?"

He didn't know what she was talking about until he realized they were at the Shinobi Museum. A large, green building constructed under the reign of Tobirama, it was one of the longest buildings in the village.

His spirits tumbled more. She was looking at him expectantly, so he had to say, "I didn't go."

"Oh. Were you sick?"

That wasn't the reason, but he said, "Yeah." He repeated, "I was sick," and then he walked away before she could ask him more questions.

It wasn't until they were close to the ramen shop again that Naruto looked over his shoulder. He wanted to steer her away if he could, in case she hadn't seen the shop display, but he matched eyes with a burly man who had a handlebar mustache and was balancing a keg over his shoulder. Naruto stopped and turned around. Or more like, he stopped moving forward and started weaving in place as a forest of adults twice his size kept flowing over him. There were zero signs of Seema, and the area was only going to get more crowded with the lunch rush.

"Aaaagh!" Naruto groaned. He just wanted this day to be over. It hadn't been nearly as fun as he'd expected. Then he recalled that Seema did not know her way.

He didn't care. She could ask any old lady and they could point her on her way. He kept on weaving around other people's hips and bags and legs, just looking for an of vertical space, so that he could launch himself upwards without knocking someone over. And when it came, well, he was ready. His legs were pumped and he was free and he was taking to the sky.

* * *

He noticed her because she had red hair like Kushina's.

Kakashi berated himself. Kushina was dead and he knew it. He waited for Gai to follow him up the stairs and returned to the peace in his mind that he had wanted from this place, marveling at the perfect sky.

"What is this place?" asked Gai, pocketing his rice crackers. Even he sensed it was too sacred for his crunching.

"Nakano Shrine, home of the Uchiha's patron deity." _The new one_ , thought Kakashi, because the Senju had destroyed the old one.

Gai crossed his arms. "Mmm nyaah I don't believe in stuff like that."

"Look, just be a good sport," said Kakashi, embarrassed. He really hoped nobody else heard that. "Go take a fortune for yourself."

Gai obliged and followed the red-haired woman into the shrine when a voice called out, "Captain Kakashi!"

Kakashi turned to see Itachi climbing up the steps.

"What are you doing here?" Itachi asked him.

"ITACHIIII. HURRY UUUUUP!"

Past the base of the stairs, a young boy with features like Itachi's had taken off his shoes and socks. He was holding them in his hands as he dunked his feet into the canal with the koi fish. "Oops!" He dropped a sock.

"Sasuke!" Itachi said, cross. He jumped down and plucked the sock out of the water before it floated away. The sudden movement took Sasuke so much by surprise, however, Sasuke dropped everything else in his hands too. Itachi began to admonishing him.

Kakashi chuckled. He wanted to ask how Itachi's new role as captain had been. _But_ , he supposed, _another time._

"Hey, Kakashi, check this out!" Gai yelled out, running back to him. "The fortune I drew says 'Excellent luck!'" He held the fortune out to Kakashi's face.

Kakashi flinched at Gai's volume. Behind Gai, the woman was now coming out, and Kakashi was disappointed as he knew he would be. It wasn't Kushina. It was unreasonable to have imagined it, but he was getting used to seeing the dead in unexpected places.

This woman had dark skin and red eyes. She wore a sky blue veil that covered her face, though not her hair. She held her fortune paper into the wind and let the wind grasp it away, the white paper noisily fluttering.

"Let's see what luck _you_ get," said Gai, pushing Kakashi towards the shrine with a jab to the back. It would be his most undignified entrance into a shrine. Kakashi made a mental note not to bring this man again.

To his relief, however, he soon saw Itachi dragging in Sasuke by the wrist.

"It's _my_ money!" the little one was saying. "I'm _not_ going to spend it here!"

"Sasuke — "

"It's _my_ birthday! It's _my_ money!" Sasuke grappled. " _Mom_ gave it to me! _Mooom gaaave meeeeeeeee_ — " He had dug in his heels.

"Fine," said Itachi. He shoved away Sasuke's wrist. "If you want a cursed year, you can have it."

The three ninjas watched Sasuke stick his tongue before he running away with shoes that squelched and all his money. Needless to say that would be the last time Sasuke was stingy when it came to shrines, considering what would happening in the following night.

But that, of course, is another story.

 _Terrible luck_ , Kakashi's fortune said.

 _Excellent luck,_ said Itachi's.

Itachi didn't say anything to Kakashi and left. Gai followed Kakashi to the rotund trees that encircled the shrine. Kakashi was tying his terrible fortune to a branch when he saw it: a fortune caught in the fork of the branch above.

Kakashi frowned. Bad fortunes get tied to the trees so that the bad luck doesn't follow its victim out, but good fortunes get taken along. This fortune had undergone neither. It was the woman's; he was sure of it. He reached up, caught the corner of the fortune in his fingertips, and pulled it down.

Gai could not believe his eyes. "Is this even possible?" he asked. He took the fortune out of Kakashi's hand and flipped it back and forth.

"I guess it is," Kakashi said, looking around. The woman was not to be found. He looked back at the fortune Gai handed him.

It was empty. There was nothing.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

On the night the Uchiha Clan was going to be eradicated, Seema held out a deck of playing cards to Naruto, fanned out and face-down. "You're supposed to pick five, if I recall correctly," she said, frowning at the cards. "You can even pick six if you want to, but I think that might mess things up."

They were sitting outside on the wooden platform, since the wind had not yet picked up. In his first draw, he had picked out the Ace of Spades, and his heart raced at what other fortune could come his way after such a lucky first draw. He pulled three other cards out when she started.

"No no no, don't _show_ it to me! You're supposed to hide them from me."

He flushed as he handed her back the cards and watched the way the lamp reflected off her black nails as she shuffled the deck again. She blew her nose into the last of the six tissues she had brought outside, and neatly folded it in half for the next time.

"Okay. Pick three," she said, proffering cards again.

"You said five!"

"I mean five."

"Okay…" Naruto glanced up at Seema's eyes, but not deeply. Even the young were trained not to look into strangers' eyes, for fear of falling into dōjustu tricks. If she was going to use dōjutsu, though, her card tricks would be lame. Anything can be done with dōjutsu.

Then it occurred to him that he didn't know if she was a ninja, but even he wasn't rude enough to ask. These things had to be assessed through implication. He'd have to find clues. Like a true ninja would.

Also, she wasn't a stranger.

"All right," said Naruto. "That's five."

"Okay, look at them and have them memorized, and in that order."

Naruto started. " _Memorized_? Is this a test?"

"No, Naruto, you're going to give _me_ a test. _I'm_ going to guess them."

He looked at the cards in his hands, then said, "Okay."

"Now hand them back to me. Not face-up, you dummy! Oh!"

Naruto was fed-up with being called a dummy. He was fed up with being called anything like idiot. He got his dosage daily, he didn't need to hear it from Seema as well. He was about to say the whole thing was dumb, but then, she had already shuffled and handed him another set.

"Now give them back to me face- _down_."

Naruto looked at the cards again and handed them back to her, irritated.

"Now I am going to look at the first card," she said.

"What? You said you weren't looking at them!"

"Just the first, Naruto."

"But — "

"Can you get me some more napkins? Thanks. Don't knock over my beer, child."

"Don't look at the cards!" he said.

"I won't."

Naruto brought her a whole box of napkins and reseated himself with a groan. He sat pretzel style, rested his cheek against the knuckles of his left hand and fell into listening to the cicadas as she looked at the first card, with its back facing towards him, then said a very unwarranted "I _see_!"

And then she did something curious. She picked up the next card and started sniffing it.

"Wait, what — "

"Ah, Naruto, I know it!"

"Know what?"

"This card," she said, sniffing the tan hourglass symbol on the back of the card. "It smells like… But it must be! — the Eight of Diamonds. That's what you had, isn't it?"

Naruto's jaw dropped open. "Y-Yeah…?"

She turned the card over to quickly check, smiled at how right she was, and moved on to the next one. "Well, I think this one's the Four of Clubs."

Naruto watched her place this down as well as she picked the next up, sniffing at its back again. "Ooooh! My second-favorite scent! The Queen of Hearts. …Right again! Now what is this last one?"

The last one took a long, long time. She kept hemming and hawing about it for like five hundred years. At least, that was what if felt like, to Naruto.

"Aww, come on, what _is_ it already?" he asked, unable to decide if he was more excited to see her get it right, or if he just wanted to point a finger to her face when she was wrong.

"Well, I know that it's a Jack…but is it of Clubs, or of Diamonds?" She heaved a deep, worried sigh. "This one's tricky. Let's go with…Clubs."

"But — _how?_ "

Seema smiled as she held out all five cards to him.

"You cheated!" he said. "You looked at the cards while I was getting the box!"

Seema scoffed at him. "I did not."

"Then do it again!"

"Very will."

"Fine!"

And then she did it again. She only looked at the first card, but she was able to sniff the rest, which were all face-down! Naruto snatched them and sniffed at them, suspicious.

"I don't get it," he said with great reluctance. "I mean, like, all of these just smell like beer."

Seema burst into laughter. "Now that I'm done breathing on them."

Naruto inspected the cards some more, and then handed them back. "Again," he said. "Do it again."

"Okay, hold on." Seema blew her nose on the last tissue she had, and then folded _that_ in half as well. Reaching for more, she said, "Oh!" She stood up. "This box is empty."

As she hunted kitchen cabinets for another box of tissues, Naruto looked through the five cards and smelled them again. He smelled the other cards too. The other ones smelled slightly woody. Perhaps that was how it happened. The ones he picked out didn't smell woody.

When she came back again, she did the trick three, then four more times. She even let Naruto smell them first, before she turned each card over and nodded to herself. "Right again."

By the fifth time, she said she was getting tired, and she went back to her usual place: purple cushions, writing table. "Well, this is lamentable. I should not have gone with the beer," she said. "I'm allergic."

"Then why did you even buy that?"

"Because, it's cheapest."

"It smells _gross_ ," Naruto said, making a face. Then he came upon a thought and shouted, "HEY!"

Seema looked up, alarmed.

"What kind of idiot do you think I am?" he said. "You've got a runny nose! You can't _smell_ anything!"

Seema stared at him for a few seconds, stunned. And then she burst into laughter.

Just as he expected. As if he would fall for such tricks! He ran back out to retrieve the cards she'd told him to clean up, and then he brought them inside.

"Now, seriously, _show_ me what you were doing!" Naruto landed knees-first onto her cushion and felt her arm against him as she raised it to move her tankard across the table. It moved with a great wood-on-wood trudge.

"All right. This is how it works." She let him pick a hand of five cards again, but then, with him sitting at her side, they looked at the first card together. "All right?"

Naruto nodded. He was concentrating so hard he forgot to feel her breath in his hair.

"Now this." She picked up the next card, face down, a mystery to both of them. Then she sniffed — except right now it was mostly runny. "Hmm," she said in her dramatic overtones. "It sure smells like a Nine."

She seemed to be waiting for him to say something…

"Of Spades," she finished.

Naruto looked at her like she couldn't possibly be this stupid. "Well, obviously not," he said, "because the _first_ card was the Nine of Spades."

Seema flipped the second card over, ignoring him, and, outrageously, she said, "Oh! Would you look at that! Exactly…it's the Nine of Spades!"

"No, it's not!" Naruto exclaimed. Were her eyes not working? Like her nose?

Seema placed the second card back on the table, face-down, and took and sniffed the third card out of Naruto's hand. "I knew it, I knew it!" she said with a jolly shake of the head. "I knew there was Clubs in here. This is Clubs, the King."

"No, that's what the _second_ card — "

He could feel her body shake through his right arm. She may regard him with great seriousness upon her face, but he could feel her quietly laughing.

Again, he said, "But that's the _second_ card," to which she ignored him, flipped over the third card, and kept on saying, "Ah! This is just as I expected!"

When she was done going through the trick, he was still confused, and she said, "You're not the sharpest kunai, Naruto."

He crossed his arms. "I'm a _shuriken_!"

She rolled her eyes. "It's easy, Naruto, _really_. Look, the trick is, you look at the first card. And then you put it face down but _don't_ let your audience see it. Then, when you are 'smelling' the next card, you just tell them what you saw on the first card. And then you look at _that_ card and pretend like you're checking if you're right, but actually you're just learning what to say for the next card. Does that make sense to you, Naruto?"

He thought about it really hard, and then said, " _Oooooh._ " Even though he still didn't get it.

Seema's shoulders dropped in relief. He didn't realize she had been tense the whole time. Even more reason to not to let her find out he was faking. Everyone else called him stupid because he didn't care enough, but — if _she_ was saying it, what if he really _was_ stupid?

He wasn't. He really wasn't stupid. He refused to believe it. So he held out his hand, and he asked Seema, "Can I borrow the cards?"

Seema looked at the cards, slightly alarmed.

"I just want to show it to my friends," he said. "I'll practice it!"

Seema's mouth pulled into a line. Then she looked at him and smiled. "Good!" she said. "Make sure to really practice! You can do it on me next time!"

Naruto smiled as he looked down at the deck of cards Seema was entrusting to him. "Deal!"


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

The next day, there was nobody at school. "Where _is_ everybody?" Naruto asked the empty hallways. "Hellooo-OOOOO-oooo," he called as he peered under the desks of a few of his classmates. That's what they were supposed to do if they were anticipating an earthquake; Iruka Sensei told them to hide under desks. Though he didn't find anyone there, he had already slipped into play mode. He was ululating at the blackboard, the way he imagined Inuzukas at a wedding. He was running across everybody's desks. He stuck his nose into their contents. There was a bag of potato chips in Choji's, half finished. Only. He drew a poop on Kiba's pink eraser. (Kiba would smell the culprit immediately, of course.) He took everything that belonged to Ino, Sakura, and TenTen and shoved it all into Shino's desk. He knew how much the girls feared bugs, and through that, Shino as well.

He couldn't blame them. Now that he thought about it…if a girl kissed Shino when he got older…would she come out of it…with something crawling on her tongue?

Naruto felt himself convulsing at the thought. He brushed his teeth roughly down the length of his tongue, as if he was going to flick ants out of his mouth. He shuddered. Geez. Thinking about Shino gave even Naruto the heebie-jeebies. He was good material for nightmares.

(For the record, he forgot about Hinata.)

Then he looked at the clock. Not even 9:30am _._ What was he going to _do_ with himself?

Today _was_ Wednesday, right? He itched his cheek as he looked at the class calendar. They were at the tail end of learning the substitution jutsu. On Thursday was supposed to be an exam — tomorrow. The Thursday below that was another: the swimming test. Naruto was pretty sure he was going to fail that one too.

He was disappointed. He had come to ask Shikamaru to teach him how to do the card trick, but now, his stomach was turning into a vortex of being overwhelmed. What could he do could he do could he _DOOOOOOOOOO_?

He engaged in some screaming inside of his head. And then he was fine.

He took out his headphones, swung on his backpack, and perched on the window of the classroom again. He'd had enough school for today.

* * *

"Where _is_ everybody?" Naruto asked Iruka, picking at a scab. "Did the world decide to take a vacation?"

Iruka was stunned. He didn't know about the massacre. Naruto hadn't heard about the massacre. He didn't know about the killings. He didn't know the news. The messaging from the police force had been nothing but unclear. The Uchiha District yesterday; which clan would it be today?

Konoha had become, with one act, a ghost town. Everyone was going into hiding. Grocers had been raided before dawn. Storefronts, shuttered as usual for the night, were staying shuttered through the daylight. The streets were so quiet and sparse, it chilled the marrow in Iruka's bone. The Hyuugas had already completed their exodus. They chose to return to their former haunts than to stay within Konoha's walls. What good was it to seek the protection of these walls when the enemy was on the _inside_? It would be _years_ before Iruka would see Neji or Hinata again.

And Naruto was just bumbling outside?

"HEY!" exclaimed Naruto, pointing at the folders in Iruka's hands. "Why does the substitution jutsu have to have a _bluebook_ exam?"

Iruka gave a husk of a laugh. "You idiot…"

That flat look came back again. Naruto _hmph_ ed and leaped to the window.

"Naruto, go home," said Iruka.

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

"And don't come back until —" Iruka had meant to say more, but Naruto was already gone. He internally kicked himself with a groan. "Dammit, not again…"

* * *

"Naruto!" Iruka hollered. "Narutooo!"

It was no use. Naruto wouldn't stop no matter how much Iruka yelled. He hated to admit it, but the kid was remarkably faster than him. Springing off of roofs, a light pole, and a water tower, Naruto vaulted three to four steps ahead of Iruka, and launched himself out of the domestic unit of Konoha's Akimichi Clan and into the power plant, sliding skillfully down one of the plant's two chimneys.

 _What kind of an idiot throws himself headfirst into the matrix of an_ ** _electrical plant_** _?_

Iruka rushed forward, the bottom of his stomach going out with a new sense of urgency. The only way to catch up to Naruto would be to slow him down…and to slow him down, it would look like Iruka was attacking him.

Do it wrong, and he catches Naruto mid-jump and lands him into a wire that electrocutes him. Those wires were passing over five hundred thousand volts to account for the losses of transmission over a hundred miles within the city of Konoha, and over four hundred miles of line outside of it.

Iruka bypassed the water tower and dropped over the _NO TRESPASSING_ fence, right into a conveyor belt full of coal. The conveyor belt, a chute, lifted from just above ground level to fifty feet above ground. It ended by emptying into the great gray tubes — silos — a reserve of over forty thousand tons of coal needed to keep the power plant going.

On top of that was what looked like a great white box, with one side open. This was the receiving end of the coal chute, and beyond Iruka's comprehension, miraculously, it had managed to stay white. Over the lip of that great white box, there came into view a yellow tuft, then the face, then the shoulders and neck, and the torso of Naruto, as the kid was breathing hard and looking down.

Iruka was also breathing hard, the coal skittering, clicking, clacking around his feet. The chute was rickety underneath him, with metal clanging and bangs. It was transposing him in an upwards arc towards Naruto, whose blond hair was now swung in the hot, muggy wind.

Maybe this was how it always was, Iruka thought to himself. To Naruto, it always looked like Iruka was attacking him. When did Naruto ever hear him out? Kid was always running away. When did Iruka ever even get to finish a sentence?

He had called him a liar. Naruto wasn't lying that day, yes, Iruka knew that now. But with his track record — honestly, Iruka couldn't take fault. But what had Naruto heard now? He heard the words "don't come back," and then he scrammed. He didn't hear anything else.

Iruka was supposed to be teaching the Will of Fire to the next generation of Konoha. When it came to Naruto…what was he teaching?

Iruka slapped his hands together, brushing off some of the coal from his hands as he thought, if he was _really_ going to be teaching Naruto well…he just needed the kid to be in one place for more than two minutes, dammit!

" _Isshi toujin!_ " Iruka slapped his hand down along the flat, metal side of the chute underneath him, then hissed as the side of his ring finger caught the edge of a nail as the chute continued shuttling him. Naruto was still watching him, still breathing hard, but from the way he looked down at his feet, it was clear he had tried to take a step back and be gone. Iruka knew what Naruto was seeing next. The boy would find his feet surrounded by ring upon ring of black symbols enacting Iruka's barrier ninjutsu.

He was finally going to get to the idiot.

"Hey!" Iruka could see the word form on Naruto's lips, though he couldn't hear him over the metal clanging yet. Now Naruto was trying to remove a foot out of his sandal — _shit!_

"Naruto!" Iruka dashed up the chute, the metal creaking ominously underneath, and in one leap, he landed next to Naruto before the barefoot Naruto could leap.

"Let me go!"

"No! We're not doing this again!"

"I said let me _go!_ "

"Stop struggling — ouch! — "

Naruto had landed a barefoot kick at Iruka's shin. But it clearly hurt Naruto more; Iruka didn't even want to think which direction Naruto might have just sent his toes. Judging from Naruto's face…

"Gods dammit…" Iruka sighed.

Naruto had buckled with both hands around his left toes. As he landed on his rump on the white deck underneath him, the black symbols of Iruka's seal swept up onto the fabric of Naruto's pants, up his thighs. Now, Naruto was definitely sealed into place.

Iruka got down on his haunches. "Let me look at them," he said.

But Naruto slapped his hands away with a violent " _Don't touch me!_ "

Iruka was still for a moment, then took a seat beside Naruto. He looked out over the power plant, with the power lines standing tall and stark in the north, the two chimneys to the east, the sun climbing between them, the chute below falling off to the west. He was subconsciously rubbed his hands inside of themselves to rub off the sting as he listened to the coal in its constant clattering, as if flowed into the silos below.

"Sensei…why do you keep following me?" Naruto kept his gaze always down, trying with two fingers to try to peel a binding symbol that looked like a squished and sloppy 'e' off the end of his right knee. It remained on his knee like print.

"I followed you because I've needed to talk to you…for a very long time."

The kid stopped picking at his trousers as he listened.

"I guess the first thing I should say is that I'm sorry to you," Iruka started. "But…"

Naruto looked up at him.

"It's somewhat hard." Iruka watched a pair of birds skiff the wind and land, indecisively, on one power line, then the next. "My parents were killed during the Nine Tails' Attack."

Naruto stared intently at him for a moment, then he tore his gaze away. "So? That's not my fault."

"I know."

"I didn't ask for _any_ of this."

"I know."

"Then why don't you — just — _act_ like you know? Why doesn't — anybody!"

Iruka could hear the tightening inside Naruto's throat.

He couldn't say more in that vein. It was too close to breaking the village's eight-year decree.

"Naruto…the people who got killed last night…it was the Uchiha Clan." He could feel Naruto stiffen. Iruka hated to do it this way. He had started to lead Naruto in one direction, and now was switching the subject, not giving the kid an answer to his question. But of course he knew Naruto would listen. Who wouldn't listen on hearing such terrible news?

"And what about Sasuke?"

Iruka was struck by the thought. Of all the things Naruto could have asked him — by whom? Where? How? _Why?_ — the first thing that Naruto thought about was Sasuke.

"Sasuke's fine," said Iruka. "Well, no, he's not, but I heard he wasn't physically hurt. I just can't imagine…"

"You just can't imagine what?"

Iruka looked at him. "Naruto…Sasuke was the only one alive."

"Out of what?"

"Of his entire clan."

Naruto's eyes widened. "Wait, _what_?" Now he stirred and looked about. "Why would anybody do something like that?"

Of course the kid didn't know, Iruka realized. Who did he have, to tell him? Iruka stood up, brought his hands together, and released Naruto from the barrier ninjutsu. "No one knows yet," Iruka said, "but this is why there's no one out and about right now. Naruto…a lot of people are afraid. This is why, I will now be escorting you. Let's get you home. We have to get you somewhere safe."

Naruto rose to his feet, subconsciously testing that he could lift his legs — and his shoes — off the white deck his shoes had previously been glued to by Iruka's jutsu. "Sensei," Naruto said, looking at his shoes, not him. "Should I be afraid as well, Iruka Sensei?"

Iruka paused for a moment, then said, "Everyone has cause to be afraid, to some extent."

Naruto nodded, looking serious.

"Don't worry, Naruto," Iruka said to him with a smile. "I'm with you, for a while."

Naruto stared at him for a moment, lips parted. And then, he looked away.

* * *

"Just stay here for a while," Iruka had said to Naruto. "I'll get food for us both, in ten minutes' time." And with that, he had left Naruto in Naruto's apartment and dropped into the barbecue place with the smoking chimney he had seen two streets back. Open! Serving! What a rarity! When he came back with a pork bowl and a treat from the Land of Wind — bulgogi — he found Naruto's apartment door slightly ajar.

Iruka's heart skipped a beat. "Naruto?" He entered the apartment and placed the food, wrapped in a plastic bag, on top of the shoe cabinet beside the door. Reaching for his kunais, he advanced through the apartment, but of Naruto he saw no signs. Nor did he see signs of a scuffle.

No Naruto, no backpack. Iruka sighed. He thought he had finally gotten through to Naruto. He thought, this time, Naruto would wait. What possessed Iruka to think things would work with this child?

So where _was_ Naruto? Iruka wondered, exiting the apartment and locking the door behind him. It was after he heard the click of the lock that he realized he had stupidly left the food all behind him, but then he thought of it: of where Naruto went, and why.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

"Seema!"

Naruto came down the slope of the road to her at a run. She was kneeling at the pool, on the single, largest, flattest rock, and she had her two hands pressed between her thighs. She looked up from the fish at him as he came to a stop at the edge, and asked, "What are you doing?"

"Communing." Seema went back to looking at the fish.

In a bizarre flash, Naruto saw an image of Seema's face, rippling through water…like he was looking up at her…the remnant of a dream…and he had been a fish…

But now Seema looked back at him. "Is it not school time?" she asked, her voice hypnotic and lilting.

Naruto was breathing hard as he said, "I just wanted to make sure that you were okay."

Seema's brow went up on one side, and for some reason, Naruto blushed. He said, "Listen, something is happening."

"Something has already happened," she responded. She looked back to the fish in the pool.

Naruto couldn't tell if he was being dismissed. Risking the fact that she might yell at him, he dropped his backpack where it was and came to the large flat rock, squeezing himself beside her. Seema didn't look like she was pleased, but she had shifted sideways, and she had accommodated.

The air was hardly stirring. The heat and humidity made it hard to sit and breathe in unfiltered sun, but Naruto let himself pink with oncoming sunburn anyways. He needed to feel her body beside him. These ligaments and muscles and tendons and bones assured Naruto that she was real. That she was here.

"What do you know of this?" asked Seema, taking a stapled set of papers out from where she had clamped them in half between her thighs. Naruto hadn't even noticed them, and leaned her way to take a peek at what was written on them. To his astonishment, she took the two corners at the top and proceeded to rip the pages down the middle.

"What are you doing!" Naruto gasped.

Seema continued ripping the pages into itsy-bitsy bits. There was a giant _47_ written on the page in the front, but he could read nothing else before it was all in shreds and smithereens. She littered these into the water, like she was distributing salt to a meal, or spreading sprinkles on ice cream.

"I have to feed my fish," she said, "and he only likes to eat words."

Naruto's jaw dropped open. The fish — now a shimmering, glimmering ice blue — had risen to the very top, taking into the round of its gaping mouth a single piece of paper at a time as the white word-speckled flecks turned gray in the water. Slowly, a few at a time, they sank.

Naruto watched. What he had just seen, of his village, and Iruka, slipped away. Here, in the near-silent lap of the pool, the world faded into the smell of Seema's hair (which she had washed it in fourteen days).

"So what do you know of this?" Seema asked again. "Of the yesterday's happenings."

"Oh! You weren't talking about the paper?" Naruto was suddenly hyper-aware of all the coal on his hands and legs. It was getting on her clothes. He grumbled. "The something of yesterday…" It didn't feel real to him. It didn't feel real to him at all. "Iruka Sensei…he said…that the Uchiha Clan was eliminated. Except for Sasuke."

"'Eliminated'?" Seema's brows were raised.

He was insanely proud she had picked up on it. _Eliminated_ was a very Neji word.

Seema looked back at the fish. "Please tell Grandmother for me."

" _Grandmother_?" Naruto repeated. "Where does your grandmother live? I didn't even know you _had_ a grandmother." Then, seeing that her body was not turned to him, he said, "Did you just say that to the fish?"

"What is it you say all the time? _Believe it!_ "

Naruto didn't know what to do. He had never had that phrase turned back on him. Now that he was hearing it, it sounded kind of dumb…

But. Seema. Was talking to a fish.

Naruto looked back into the pool. And then he leaned forward, agape. The fish was gone. "What!" he whispered into the water.

Seema pushed herself to her feet with a long groan. "My kneeeeees."

And then she retreated into the house. This time, the sliding doors along the sides were unopened; they were optimizing shade and cool air. Naruto retrieved his backpack and followed her in. He was beginning to feel a little unsettled about that fish. Fear…yes. He didn't know why, but that was what it was.

When he got inside, Seema was collecting bottles and sweeping the floor. "So what's your grandmother like?"

Seema sniffed the bottle she had picked and stuck its mouth up to her eye. "Scary."

Naruto waited for a little more than that, then asked, "Your parents?"

Seema was deadpan: "Stupid."

Naruto considered this. No one he knew ever talked about their parents this way.

Then, hesitantly: "Your brother?"

Seema lifted the bottle to her lips and made a sucking sound. Disappointed, she set it on the table next to her other empties. She went back to sweeping as she said, "I don't have a brother."

"But you once did?"

Seema paused mid-stroke. She had her back to him. "No, Naruto. I never had a brother." And then she went back to sweeping.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

 _Naruto asked hesitantly: "Your brother?"_

 _Seema lifted the bottle to her lips and made a sucking sound. Disappointed, she set it on the table next to her other empties. She went back to sweeping as she said, "I don't have a brother."_

 _"But you once did?"_

 _Seema paused mid-stroke. She had her back to him. "No, Naruto. I never had a brother." And then she went back to sweeping._

Naruto frowned, and he sat right where he stood, in front of the door. His eyes were still adjusting from the bright outside. Of her, he could only see an outline, a form. Perhaps he shouldn't have been asking those things.

He was helping her carry the bottles outside to the shed in the back, where trash and recycling would be collected around dusk, when she asked him, "Is that something I was saying? When I was full of drink?"

And he said, "Kind of…" Because he didn't know what to say. He knew what _not_ to say.

Seema loaded the clinking bottles into the blue bin, and she kept looking troubled. "Naruto, you have to get back to your place faster. _Before_ I start drinking."

"But you're drinking _all_ the _time_."

He'd never seen Seema's eyes widen in anger like that. Now they were widened at him. He took a step back. "It's okay," he said. "I like it that way. That's when you're fun."

Seema's shoulders seemed to collapse. She became smaller.

"Well." Her tone was clipped. "You're going to leave earlier. Because I'm not going to be fun anymore."

"But — "

"Naruto, I mean it," she said. "I'm not… I'm not myself when I drink."

"So?" said Naruto. "I like you. I like _all_ the you's that you are."

Seema's face was twisting. "No, Naruto, you have to go back. You _have_ to, _always_ , before ten."

"But why?"

"Naruto, you don't understand."

"What do you mean? What don't I get?" he said. And her eyes were growing wide, because she knew what he was about to say.

He said, "I love you."

And he said, "Can't I stay?"

And all he wanted to say was, "I love you."

And all he wanted to do was to stay.

But he knew from the look on her face that he didn't want the answer.

That he shouldn't ask questions if he didn't want truth.

Then she said, "No," and her face was swimming. It blurred until he couldn't see anymore.

"Naruto — "

 _I don't understand._ He couldn't get the words past the rock in his throat.

"Gods, Naruto…"

"You're right, I _don't_ understand. I don't understand _anything_."

And he said, " _Why?_ "

And he said, "What's wrong with me?"

And she said, "Nothing's wrong with you, Naruto."

But he didn't hear it. He hadn't stayed to hear.

It's what he had always done, what he'd just done with Iruka. Naruto turned and ran away.

* * *

 **END PART 1**


End file.
